--- title: "Deploying Chaos Products for Academic Institutions" canonical: "https://documentation.chaos.com/space/LIC5/1146159108/Deploying%20Chaos%20Products%20for%20Academic%20Institutions" format: markdown --- This page provides steps for installing and setting up Chaos Products for users in Academic Institutions. ## **Introduction** --- This guide helps IT staff at universities, colleges, and schools choose and plan a Chaos deployment for their Labs and students. Each section describes what a setup provides, what needs to be in place beforehand, and which articles to follow for the configuration steps. Academic licenses are **floating** licenses: a pool of concurrent seats shared across students, rather than seats tied to named individuals. ## **Terminology** --- Chaos documentation uses commercial terminology. Here are the academic equivalents: | **Chaos term** | **Academic equivalent** | | --- | --- | | **Organization** | The institution's or department's tenant in the admin portal. | | **Organization Administrator** | The license administrator, usually IT or a department lead. | | **Floating license** | A concurrent seat. One student uses it on one device at a time; closing the product returns it to the pool. | | **Chaos License Server** | The campus or departmental license server the institution hosts. | | **Remote licensing** | A Lab computer configured to draw its seat from that server. | | **Cloud Licensing** | Sign-in licensing. A student signs in and gets a seat, with no license server involved. | | **Floating License Sharing** | The setting that turns seats into a pool any student in the Organization can draw from. | | **Corporate Sign In** | Institutional SSO. Students sign in with their university credentials. | | **Chaos Credits** | The balance consumed by AI features and cloud rendering. | | **My Chaos portal** | The admin console at [my.chaos.com](http://my.chaos.com). | ## **Determining your use case** --- Answer these questions to determine which setup is needed: 1. **Do students need to use Chaos software away from campus, on their own laptops?** If yes, use case 3. 2. **Only Lab access, but students need AI features (Veras, AI Material Generator, etc.) or Collaboration?** If yes, use case 2. 3. **Only Lab access, no AI or cloud features?** If yes, use case 1. ## **Case 1: Lab-only access with no Credits** --- ### **Possibilities** --- Chaos software is licensed and ready when a student opens their application in the Lab. No sign-in is required. AI features, Collaboration, the Cosmos asset library, and cloud rendering are unavailable, as all of these work with individual user accounts. Lab licenses also cannot be used on a personal machine outside the Lab network. ### **How it works** --- A license server runs on the Lab network. This small utility connects to Chaos licensing and holds the institution's pool of concurrent seats. Lab computers request a seat from the server when a student launches the software, and release it when the software closes. The seat is issued to the *machine* rather than to a person, so no individual login is involved. ### **What you need in place** --- - A machine on the same network as the Lab computers to run the license server. It needs outbound internet access to reach Chaos licensing services, and must be running for Lab computers to connect. - A Chaos account with license seats assigned to it. The server activates against one account, and only licenses held by that account become available. Licenses can be split between Labs by creating a separate account for each. - TCP port 30304 must be reachable from Lab computers to that machine. The installer can usually add the firewall exception. ### **Setup Articles** --- | **Task** | **Article** | | --- | --- | | **Plan the deployment** | [License Server Deployment](https://docs-chaos.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/LIC5/pages/124524875) | | **Install and activate the server** | [Installing the License Server](https://docs-chaos.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/LIC5/pages/124757577) | | **Point Lab computers at the server** | [Installing the Product for Network Floating Licensing](https://docs-chaos.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/LIC5/pages/124359638) | | **Apply one client configuration across a whole Lab** | [Sharing a License Configuration in a Network](https://docs-chaos.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/LIC5/pages/125050770) | | **Keep licenses available if the server goes down** | [Redundancy Deployment Options](https://docs-chaos.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/LIC5/pages/124494252) | | **Deploy the server without operator input** | [Silent Installation](https://docs-chaos.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/LIC5/pages/124624720) | | **Adjust an installed server from the command line** | [License Server Controller](https://docs-chaos.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/LIC5/pages/125050723) | > ℹ️ Chaos products also support silent installation for deployment across multiple machines. Each product documents its own options in its installation article. ### **Planning notes** --- - **Seat count **– The pool covers the largest number of students working simultaneously: typically the largest timetabled class in the busiest Lab, plus headroom for students working outside class hours. - **Central client configuration **– A single client configuration file on a network share can be read by every Lab computer, instead of entering a server address on each one. The file can also list fallback servers, so a Lab keeps working if the primary server is down. > Macro (anchor) ## **Case 2: Lab-only access plus Chaos Credits and Collaboration** --- This case includes everything in Use case 1, with the addition of Collaboration and the features that consume Chaos Credits: Veras, Cloud Rendering, AI Material Generator, AI Enhancer, and AI Upscaler. ### **Why student accounts are required** --- Credits are consumed by a user, not a machine. Collaboration does not consume Credits, but it does require each student to sign in with a Chaos account. Every participating student therefore needs an account, even though licenses still come from the Lab server. ### **How it works** --- The license server continues to provide seats to Lab computers with no login required. Student accounts are used only for Credits, Collaboration, and the Cosmos asset library. Lab computers are licensed on launch; students sign in only to use a feature that requires their account. ### **Setup Needed** --- Everything from Use case 1, plus: - A Chaos account for every student who needs these features, added to the My Chaos Organization. - A Credit balance for them to draw on. ### **Setup Articles** --- Set up the license server as described in Use case 1, then follow these guides: | **Task** | **Article** | | --- | --- | | **Invite students individually** | [Managing Users and Licenses](https://docs-chaos.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/LIC5/pages/124657185) | | **Add a cohort by CSV upload** | [Bulk User Management](https://docs-chaos.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/LIC5/pages/124656864) | | **Provision student accounts automatically from a directory** | [Corporate Sign In](https://docs-chaos.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/LIC5/pages/244088844) | | **Understand and buy Credits** | [Chaos Credits](https://docs-chaos.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/LIC5/pages/860160024) | | **See what each feature costs** | [Features requiring credits](https://docs-chaos.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/LIC5/pages/969211912) | > ✅ Manual invitation and CSV upload both require ongoing maintenance. For recurring intakes, automatic provisioning from an identity provider removes it. *See **[Use case 3](#CaseThreeAnchor)**.* ### **Managing Credits for a Cohort** --- New users default to unlimited access to the shared Credit pool. Per-student credit limits cap what one student can draw from the pool each month. The same limit can be applied to every user in the Organization in a single action, to a selected group, or to individuals. ### **What Students See on a Lab Computer** --- The software opens licensed, with no prompt. A student is asked to sign in the first time they use a feature that requires their account. That sign-in persists for the machine and OS user. > Macro (anchor) ## **Case 3: Off-campus Student Access** --- Students use Chaos software on their own laptops, wherever they are. ### **How it works** --- A student signs in with their educational account and takes a seat from the shared pool; closing the software returns it. No campus network or VPN connection is needed. Access is controlled in the My Chaos admin portal by Organization membership. ### **What you need in place** --- - A Chaos account for every student in the Organization. - **All concurrent seats assigned to the administrator account.** Only seats held by the administrator form the shared pool. - **Floating License Sharing enabled** for the Organization. Only an administrator can turn this on. - Product versions that support Cloud Licensing. Recent releases include it; older installations reach licenses through a license server. Only one shared pool is supported. Seats cannot be split into separate pools within a single Organization. ### **Setup Articles** --- | **Task** | **Article** | | --- | --- | | **Enable sharing and assign seats** | [Managing Floating Licenses](https://docs-chaos.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/LIC5/pages/124757909) | | **Understand sign-in licensing** | [Cloud Licensing](https://docs-chaos.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/LIC5/pages/124524692) | | **Move an existing server-based setup over** | [Migrating to Cloud Licensing](https://docs-chaos.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/LIC5/pages/125050590) | | **Add students in bulk** | [Bulk User Management](https://docs-chaos.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/LIC5/pages/124656864) | | **How students reach their licenses** | [Accessing Licenses](https://docs-chaos.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/LIC5/pages/124493968) | ### **Institutional sign-in** --- Manual invitation and CSV upload require ongoing maintenance. Corporate Sign In connects an existing identity provider, so that students sign in with their university credentials and accounts are created and retired automatically. - **OIDC** handles authentication. A student enters their email address, is redirected to the institution's login page, authenticates there, and returns signed in. No separate Chaos password is created. - **SCIM** handles account provisioning and de-provisioning. The institution's directory becomes the source of truth: new students appear, name changes propagate, and deactivating a student in the directory deactivates them in Chaos. The login route is determined by the domain of the address a student enters, and one Organization maps to one domain. If students are on `students.example.edu`, then staff are on `example.edu`; only one of those can use institutional sign-in. The other group can be provisioned by invitation or CSV upload and use ordinary Chaos accounts. SCIM and OIDC integration is requested by raising a support ticket or contacting a Chaos account manager. Credentials are exchanged first, after which the identity provider can be configured. Configuration steps by identity provider: - [Microsoft Entra ID](https://docs-chaos.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/LIC5/pages/243859464) - [Okta](https://docs-chaos.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/LIC5/pages/244351129) - [PingFederate](https://docs-chaos.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/LIC5/pages/244875301) Other identity providers that support the SCIM and OIDC standards can be integrated, though configuration steps are not published for them. ## **FAQ** --- **Do Lab computers need student accounts?** Only for AI features, Collaboration, and the Cosmos asset library. Licensing V-Ray, Enscape, Corona, and other Chaos products through a license server requires no account. **Can different departments have separate pools of seats?** With a license server, yes. Licenses are assigned to a user in the Organization, and each license server signs in as that user. The account does not need to belong to a person: `architecture_dept@uni.edu` or `lab1@uni.edu` work equally well. Multiple accounts can each hold a subset of licenses, with one license server per account. Cloud Licensing supports only one shared pool per Organization. Chaos Credits can be limited per student in all cases. **What happens to a graduating student's Collaboration projects?** The account is retained in a deactivated state rather than deleted, and can be reactivated. For transferring or retaining content, raise a ticket with Chaos support. **Can students use their institutional license for freelance or commercial work?** No, academic licenses are for educational use only. **Does my University License include access to the Cosmos Library?** Yes, all Enscape, V-Ray, and Corona University Collection Licenses include complete access to the Chaos Cosmos Library. **How can students access the Chaos Cosmos Library?** Students need individual accounts in order to download assets. Invite students to your Organization to provide them access to the full collection of assets. *Please refer to **[Case 2](#CaseTwoAnchor)** and **[Case 3](#CaseThreeAnchor)*.